fevnut's musings #10: A great night, Pitchside Pete and Mark Aston

 

A Great Night

Got up on Monday, had breakfast and then a shower. Then we got dressed – navy pants, navy socks, navy trackies, Fev 2021 home shirt and finally a navy hoodie proudly emblazoned with the Fev Foundation logo. (Note: We really ought to get some navy trainers!)

The time seemed to pass incredibly slowly until we got in the car to drive to the ground to arrive at 6pm because we were going to be selling Golden Gamble tickets. That was amazing. You could feel the commitment of the fans coming in. No one bought single tickets and we’ve never known so many buying a fivers worth.

Finally, into the main stand to get our stats sheets ready. What a feeling as the teams came out! In all the years of attending games at Post Office Road we’ve never felt such shared excitement in anticipation of watching our super-hero team getting ready for kick-off. A minute’s silence for all our ‘comrades’ who have died in the last year. It wasn’t totally silent but absolutely no blame for those who couldn’t keep quiet because it was a group of tots - the player’s kids.

Finally, after more than 400 days the whistle blows and Chizzy kicks off. An excellent defensive set restricting Oldham to short of the halfway line and they kick deep to our left wing. Chizzy gathers it and sets off at pace to meet their defensive line but they can’t get to him. With electric acceleration and beautiful swerves he leaves them floundering and races the full length of the pitch to score under the posts!

 

In any game that would have been amazing but in the circumstances it felt very much more so. It will definitely go down amongst the greatest ever moments of watching our beloved Rovers. You could feel the ecstasy emanating from all around the ground.

We usually prefer tight games, with nail-biting endings, but this match was a celebration of everything that is wonderful about Featherstone Rovers and their community.

 

 

Pitchside Pete 

Like, we suspect, many of you, at the first opportunity, we watched the game again on Rovers TV. Re-living every moment of it as if we were still in the stadium.

And what a brilliant commentary we got from Pitchside Pete. He gets better and better and is way superior to many the commentaries we have endured on either Sky or OurLeague.

 

We particular loved this section describing Craig Hall’s first try:

“It’s Holmes with that deft little kick for Craig Hall to chase. Will the bar of soap score again? He is slippier than an eel, more slippery than a bar of soap, but smells just as nice. Craig Hall in for a fantastic second try of this evening.” 

Well, we can’t vouch for how Craig Hall smells but what a great, amusing piece of commentary!

Of course, we prefer to see games live but it is always worth hearing Pete calling the game. Congratulations and a big thank you to one of the best commentators of all time.

 

The Championship

It’s going to be a great season and for now it looks like Toulouse and Fev are definitely the stand-out teams in the league.

After losing a tight game to us in the opening round Batley strung four impressive wins together but came a cropper with a 40-6 hammering by London Broncos at Mount Pleasant on Saturday.

Bradford have crept up into 3rd place after looking very poor at the start of the year, losing to us 41-16 in the cup and then losing 50-12 to Sheffield. Next, they scraped past Halifax by one point with a late drop goal but they have now won 4 out of 5 Championship games.

London, who were also expected to be a contender, were lying at the bottom of the table after two rounds but they, too, have been climbing and, after that win against Batley, are now in 5th place.

 

It’s always difficult so early in the season to see how things will pan out. But our best guess is that it will end up as a two horse race between ourselves and Toulouse. We need to keep winning and the games against Toulouse will be of huge significance. And it might be only the home game against them on August 1^st (Yorkshire Day) if it ends up being impossible to re-arrange the away game that was postponed on May 1^st.

 

Mark Aston 

He is certainly not a favourite of the Fev fans. That dates back to when he signed for Fev for the 1994-95 season and it felt that this outstanding player’s heart wasn’t really in it when playing for Rovers.

 

But for Sheffield fans he must be a superhero. According to the record books he made his début for the Eagles in their second season (1985-86) although we understand he actually played one game in their first season, listed as a trialist.

Apart from his little over a year at Fev and two loan games for Bramley he played his whole career for Sheffield for whom he scored over two thousand points. 

At the end of 1999 came a hammer blow for the Eagles when the RFL made the stupid and ludicrous decision to ‘merge’ the Sheffield and Huddersfield clubs. Of course it was always going to be a take-over rather than a merger, killing off professional rugby league in Sheffield.

In stepped Mark Aston and created a new Sheffield Eagles team that entered the Northern Ford Premiership in 2000, which he coached and has done ever since apart from one year when he handed over the coaching duties to Gary Wilkinson while he was merely their chief executive.

Do we like him? No! But we have huge respect for him as a great rugby league man whose dedication to the Eagles has no parallel anywhere else.